69 Comments

The editors of Maximum PC put it this way: "small is the new fashion, a big fat tower underneath your desk is no longer sexy". The context being that all this emphasis on mobile has made big power-hungry (and powerful) boxes seem old and "uncool".

THis is funny coming from "Maximum" PC. Small and quite is always welcome, and frankly it is a lot of fun seeing how powerful a machine you can get without sacrificing near silence and a tiny form factor. At the end of the day you will never get a "Maximum" power PC in a small form factor.

I have a 4771k at 4.7GHz, liquid cooling on cpu and gpu (one 140mm fan for entire system) 512GB SSD, 4TB 3.5". 2TB 2.5", 760TI, 80+ gold psu, bluray and an eSATA JBOD in my ITX system that is less than 1 foot cubed.

1. small footprint - okay you got that2. quiet - again it seems from your description you should have noise down as well3. top 20% in power - this is where your mini itx build doesn't meet the criteria. top 20% in power would require that you at least have dual sli 760 or crossfire 7870 set up to meet the lower 20%, triple setups of 780/titan or new r9 290/290x for the top range. absolute top would require dual xeon 12 core and triple crossfire r9 290x in a massive case to handle the extra loops and radiator/resevoir needed to cool that beastly of a system and reign in noise. for the top crown you'd need a cosmos II or 950d sized mini fridge case to handle it all.

yes you can build a very respectable gaming machine off of mini itx mobo's and in small enclosures. you will not ever be able to do triple sli water cooling in that space. dual socket is possible in fact shuttle had an interseting dual socket 940 opteron sff barebones a few years back with a 500 watt power supply which for the day would allow a respectable 8800 gtx to go in it. but that was the last dual socket sff i've seen so top performing is out for mini itx.Reply

20% in power would require that you at least have dual sli 760 or crossfire 7870 set up to meet the lower 20%, triple setups of 780/titan or new r9 290/290x for the top range. absolute top would require dual xeon 12 core and triple crossfire r9 290x in a massive case to handle the extra loops and radiator/resevoir needed to cool that beastly of a system and reign in noise. for the top crown you'd need a cosmos II or 950d sized mini fridge case to handle it all.

Top 20% means 19%-20% too, so any single 770/780/290/290X will do. There's a large performance delta between 10%->5%, and another huge jump from 5% to 1%. Remember that just because the percentage increases by 5% does NOT mean the performance delta increases by just as little.Reply

Great board, with minor non deal breaking issues. This is great for LAN party setups, or mobile desktop computing where laptops simply won't due. I'd recommend this for DIY Steam Box/HTPC as well.Reply

A very nice board.. and great review. I've been curious about this one.. I am on the fence when it comes to mini itx. I haven't found a case yet that I like enough to buy.. there are some good ones out there but they all seem like micro atx cases or bigger..Reply

Is Asus Secure Erase implementation just a general issuer of ATA SECURE ERASE, or is it keyed just for specific drive controllers (they must call it 'SSD' secure erase for a specific reason).Having to Secure Erase a lot of drives on a regular basis, Parted Magic is by far the easiest way for laptops and workstations that don't have it built in to the BIOS (which thankfully many now do). Boot it from USB, click 'erase drive', then follow the prompts.Reply

First, what is the difference between using the FastBoot jumper to toggle between UEFI booting methodology and the legacy boot sequence? Under what circumstances would you want to use an older, slower boot method?

Second, the top right button on the "Impact Control" board is labeled as Clear CMOS, but the paragraph under the picture describes it as a USB BIOS Flashback button. Is this a dual function button, or am I missing something?Reply

Thanks so much for the review Ian! I have been waiting for this review since the ASUS Z87 lineup launched. I was floored that a mini-ITX board was joining the ROG lineup. I'm hoping for my new build to be centered around this board.Reply

I have this and a BitFenix Prodigy. Beautiful combo, if you ask me. Anyway I use this as my main/gaming desktop with Windows 8.1. While an improvement, boot times are still between 12-17 seconds. Windows 8.1 also introduces several issues with stability, something I didn't experience quite as much with Windows 8. I also experienced the same issues with SonicRadar, but the FPS drop was more severe using a very similar setup with the exception of a GeForce GTX 680. Great board.Reply

Oh look woopie woo aren'y we clever we can stick a whole bunch of stuff on a tiny board and chrge you the same as a big board.Er actually no your not.What I want is a quality ITX board with aout all the rubbish. If I buy a Z board I am going to be overclocking, do I need any video out put on the back panel? No. DO i want SPDIF? No. DO I need 4 SATA? No, just the two. DO i need Wifi, no just a standard 1 Gb Nic.When will a Mobo comapany actually stop trying to be clever and produce a resonably priced Z board with basics and nothing more for about a 1/3 of the price of this beastie?Make that I may just think you are a bit clever ASUS et al.Reply

Would that be the 127GBP/$160 Z87E-ITX? The one with Wi-fi built in?Not exact 1/3 of the price that one.I would rather spend an extra £50-60 on upgrading processor or graphics card than MOBO features I never use.Reply

I always load whatever game i'm playing into the RAM DISK and keep it there until i beat the game or get bored with it. And then it goes back to the HDD for archive.

The best part is, RAM Disk will work on older boards, even x58 boards. I'm not sure if it's locked to Asus, but i was using it on my Rampage II Extreme about 4 months ago, and it worked like a charm.Reply

You are correct, RAM disks have been around for ages. However, the functionality of the ASUS package is not available on any of the free offerings one finds on the web. The junction feature of the ASUS package is found on some of the commercially available packages which cost $30 to buy. Reply

Just as well the vast majority of people aren't interested in ~$100-$130 boards, because the lack of relevant reviews would really make them wonder whether tech sites are more interested in serving what the manufacturers' PR want than what buyers need.Reply

Oh, come on. AT review what they get. They don't have the budget to go and buy any damn Board they want to look at, and the low-margin board builders won't afford sending out hundreds of review samples. And for those products, AT is probably not the priority number 1. There are still lots of paper-magazines out there doing nothing but comparisons of "normal stuff", being read by people who want to have a quick help for their buying decision. These magazines are the best place to get your 80$-Mainboard reviewed in.Reply

I love good looking hardware and I must say this board looks like its worth the money, it looks awesome and whilst it shouldn't, really makes me want to own it. What I would like to see though is an ITX board with 4 dim slots so I can run 32gb ram, and the full 6sata ports, but I have no idea where they would fit, I guess they'd have to be sodimms.Reply

This really looks like a great board and a perfect buy for my needs, but I really dislike that you need Java installed on your machine to be able to configure it. Besides screwing up the DPC (which is critical as I produce and DJ music) it is also the biggest backdoor and security risk you can have.

It is almost beyond stupidity and carelessness for security and their customers that Asus forces you to install such software package with such a bad track record as Java. When almost all vendors and websites has stopped using it (for very good reasons) - Asus does the oposite and starts using it. Wierd.

I was almost sure this was the perfect fully featured board for my mini-ITX build until I read that it needs Java installed. Too bad I have to search for another board, and I am not sure I will find anyone this such good hardware as this one (looks really awesome otherwise).

I recently purchased an Asus Motherboard and the problems started from day 1. The drivers update never works, the same for AI Suite III (there´s a lot of updates for this model in Asus webpage). After 2 months I still can´t install BitDefender cause a clock watchdog error.Asus technical support is the worst, mails comes and goes with no solution.I will not recommend this brand to anyone. The brand has a very good Marketing but the product and the service are very disappointment.Reply